Check out the latest issue of Girlhood Studies for Dr. Scahill's new essay "Fanfic'ing Film: Queer Youth Cinema Reclaims Pop Culture." The essay is guided by a simple question: if given the means to make their own films, what stories would young queer people today tell about their own lives? To answer this question, Dr. Scahill traveled to Calgary in 2018 to attend the Fairy Tales Film Festival, where festival organizers provided training and resources to young queer filmmake

The Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS) conference will be in Toronto this year. Please come to the workshop I'm chairing on Wednesday, March 14 from 3-4:45pm: "Not Just Kidding Around: On Teaching Children's Media" considers the absence of children's films in film studies curriculum (despite the fact that they carry a 20% market share in the industry). This is a problematic omission for understanding film culture, as children’s films have increased in market share fr

Dr. Scahill has a new short piece published this week in the media studies journal In Media Res, an online journal dedicated to timely and cutting-edge analysis of contemporary media. This week's essays are intended as companion pieces to the recent In Focus section of Cinema Journal dedicated to "Youth Culture" in media, where Dr. Scahill discussed the role of queer film festivals as providing a safe creative space for youth to learn filmmaking and engage in intergenerationa

Dr. Scahill's essay "The Reelness: Queer Film Festivals and Youth Media Training" is featured in the Fall 2017 issue of Cinema Journal, one of the most prestigious journals in the field of film studies and the publication of our largest professional organization. The piece is part of an "IN FOCUS" roundtable on "Youth Culture," and authors were asked to consider the role of visual media in the lives of young people. This essay continues Scahill's work on youth culture and que